Friday, May 23, 2014

Kasper: "I made my proposals in agreement with the pope"

Elliot Bougis, "What a relief!" (FideCogitActio, May 21, 2014), writes (emphasis and in-line commentary his):
“This pope is not a liberal pope. He is a radical pope! … This pope goes back to the gospel. … I told the pope, ‘Holy Father, there will be a controversy [after the consistory]. … The pope laughed and told him, ‘That’s good, we should have that!’ … I do not know if my proposals will be acceptable…. I made them in agreement with the pope, I did not do them just myself. I spoke beforehand with the pope, and he agreed.” …

Kasper said he was confident that the process of debate that Francis had launched on the topic of family life and sexuality would in the end produce some significant reforms, in part “because there are very high expectations.”

He noted that the church has often changed, or “developed,” over the centuries, and quite recently in the 1960s when, for example, the Second Vatican Council reversed long-standing teachings against religious freedom and dialogue with other believers.

Kasper reiterates that he’s not advocating a change in the church’s dogma on the sanctity of marriage, but a change in the “pastoral practice” about who can receive Communion. “To say we will not admit divorced and remarried people to Holy Communion? That’s not a dogma [noumenon]. That’s an application [phenomenon] of a dogma in a concrete pastoral practice. This can be changed.” [Behold the rank Kantianism!] [Source]

Kasper said it is the voice of the faithful that has made the difference. “The strongest support comes from the people, and you cannot overlook that,” he said.

“If what people are doing and what the church is teaching, if there is an abyss, that doesn’t help the credibility of the church,” he said. “One has to change.”
Bougis adds
Centuries ago, the Arians were not demanding a change in dogma, either, opting instead to disseminate their heresy through lived worship and pastoral changes. Where traditional liturgy easily spoke of Christ as God, the Arians preferred to tone down such abstruse language, speaking of Christ as the most Godlike creature [homoiousios]. Thus, based on popular expectations and customs, it was precisely by challenging and altering “merely disciplinary” matters in the liturgy–or as Kasper would say, changing “concrete pastoral practice”–that Arianism took root. Don’t be deceived: we’re enduring the same kind of assault on a different front.
[Hat tip to JM]

7 comments:

RFGA, Ph.D. said...

Heavenly Father, protect us against enemies of the faith such as Cardinal Kasper!

Michael F Poulin said...

Attention Bishops!
This issue will be the last straw, if you agree to give the Holy Eucharist to those knowing they are in a state of mortal sin, you have enabled them in compounding their sin; you will show what you really are: a brood of vipers , sons of Satan. Woe to him by whom sin comes!

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

The Third World radicalism of South America, rooted in socialism and "liberation theology," has joined with the First World radicalism of Europe and North America, rooted in the hatred of all social institutions presided over by heterosexual white men. This bastard union, miniaturized in the synodocratic embrace of Bergoglio and Kasper, will be remembered as Francis's great achievement as pope. Its chief consequence will be the destruction of the Church as we have known it: and that destruction will be celebrated by Grub Street apologists as "adapting to the times." Kasper and Bergoglio will almost certainly succeed in removing any impediments to the acceleration of the process put in motion at the grooviest council ever. Who's left to oppose them? Chances are most of us will live to see this happen: it won't take long. Ask Ottaviani.

RFGA, Ph.D. said...

I do not share your pessimism RRD. The future of the HMC is with the growing number of young people rejecting the anti-Catholic nonsense of the last 50 years. I was at a Clinton rally in '92 (yeah I voted for him). A heckler wouldn't allow him to speak. His supporters began to express their frustration. Clinton deftly calmed the situation by chiming in with 'Don't worry, you won't have to put up with him much longer.' One could say the same thing regarding the 'perverse generation' that gave us V2.

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

Robert Allen, I wish that I were not the resident pessimist here, but I see no basis in reality for the optimism you express. What you call the "the anti-Catholic nonsense of the last 50 years" has in fact been the controlling agenda of the Church for that time. The emerging post-V2 leaders who are going to wrest control from the rainbow coalition of modernists and set a new course for the Church -- from what magician's top hat will they emerge? Surely not from the dessicated seminaries of the past fifty years?

And all the young people who are going to flip their YouCats into the recycle bin and demand a return to a non-comic book, genuinely Catholic tradition that has been on life support since long before they were born -- same question, where will they come from?

Much as I'd like to, I can't accept that the past fifty years has been a generational acid trip which is about to end as the V2 generation totters toward particular judgment. What has happened over the past CENTURY or more has been an infestation, and infestations do not dissipate without assistance from an exterminator.

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

Occasionally I do some searching through PP's archives. It gives some perspective on what was being said 2-3 years ago in relation to the present argle-bargle.

Anyway, I found this comment I made in 2011, which I think is laughingly on point with the one I made yesterday in response to RA:

"[let us ask ourselves]: what happens AFTER Benedict? Every post-V2 pope (with the exception of John Paul I, about whose reign we will only be able to conjecture) has been a solid V2 progressive, the present pope included. The post-V2 generations, sodden with the theological spirits of the nouveaus, will not be noticably different from what has preceded them. Can anyone say that the reign of, for instance, a Pope Scola, would be dramatically different from that of JP2?

There's a bishop in Kazakhstan who possesses, so I am given to understand, some of the earmarks of a rip-roaring traditionalist. Anyone else??"

Well, aside from the fact that we didn't get Scola (a Balthazar groupie who passes as "conservative" in the present political landscape, and who appears to have been the favorite choice for succession of the emasculated pope-emeritus), I don't think anything above needs to be changed. We are still in the thrall of the "Spirit of V2." Anyone who really, seriously thinks otherwise should read "Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning," in which the modernist apologist Massimo Faggioli sets forth the parameters of "the situation we are in" pretty accurately, IMO.

The old fart RRD, still banging on the same tin drum. (:>D)

Sheldon said...

It's a dismal situation, RRD, as you have seen probably more clearly than anyone else in my reading of blog comments here or anywhere.

Even Bp Athanasius, as preferable as he would certainly be as pope, would likely still tow the "spirit" line on many issues such as liturgy.

And so we wait upon the Lord our God for deliverance, whether in this life or the next, and it's looking more and more like the next.